This book combines insights from philosophy and linguistics to develop a novel framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. A key innovation is to introduce explicit representations of context — assignment variables — in the syntax and semantics of natural language. The proposed theory systematizes a spectrum of “shifting” phenomena in which the context relevant for interpreting certain expressions depends on features of the linguistic environment. Central applications include local and nonlocal contextual dependencies with (...) quantifiers, attitude ascriptions, conditionals, questions, and relativization. The result is an innovative, philosophically informed compositional semantics compatible with the truth-conditional paradigm. (shrink)

The presence of contrastive focus on pronouns interpreted as bound variables is puzzling. Bound variables do not refer, and it is therefore unclear how two of them can be made to contrast with each other. It is argued that this is a problem for both alternative-based accounts such as Rooth’s (Nat Lang Semantics 1:75–116, 1992) and givenness-based ones such as Schwarzschild’s (Nat Lang Semantics 7:141–177, 1999). The present paper shows that previous approaches to this puzzle face an empirical problem, namely (...) the co-occurrence of additive too and focus on bound pronouns. Our account is based on the idea that the alternatives introduced by focused bound pronouns denote individuals. Putting forward the novel concept of compositional reconstruction, we show that a suitably modified Roothian analysis of focus licensing allows us to get bound pronouns to contrast with other bound pronouns. The reason for this is that the number of potential alternatives increases. We also suggest a modification of Rooth’s ~-operator: contrastiveness becomes a requirement of the operator, which is modelled as a definedness condition. It is argued that in the case of focused bound pronouns a ~-operator is necessarily inserted in the scope of the quantifier. If this is on the right track, it follows that the phenomenon of focused bound pronouns warrants both an operator interpreting focus as well as a semantic value for the contribution of focus. Any givenness-based analysis must include these two ingredients as well; we suggest a way in which this can be implemented more or less straightforwardly. (shrink)

I argue that common nouns should be analyzed as variables, rather than as predicates which take variables as arguments. This necessitates several unusual features to the analysis, such as allowing variables to be modally non-rigid, and assigning their values compositionally. However, treating common nouns as variables offers a variety of theoretical and empirical advantages over a more traditional analysis: It predicts the conservativity of nominal quantification, simplifies the analysis of articleless languages, derives the weak reading of sentences with donkey anaphora, (...) solves the proportion problem presented by quantifiers like ‘most’, improves the analysis of the temperature paradox, allows a more unified analysis of bare plurals, and regularizes the correspondence between syntactic categories and semantic types. (shrink)

This paper investigates the structure of English restrictive relative clauses. It provides support for the view that restrictive relative clauses are structurally ambiguous between two structures: the head-internal, raising structure and the matching structure, which has both an internal and an external head. We present a new test from extraposition facts that distinguishes between the raising and matching structures for relative clauses. Furthermore, this paper presents an account of the semantics of raising relative clauses which is intended to complete the (...) picture of the semantics of relative clauses. In particular, we argue that raising relative clauses are not islands for Quantifier Raising (QR) and that in these clauses there is successive cyclic movement through a CP-adjoined position. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel treatment of quantified concealed questions , examining different types of NP predicates and deriving the truth conditions for pair-list and set readings. A generalization is proposed regarding the distribution of the two readings, namely that pair-list readings arise from CQs with relational head nouns, whereas set readings arise from CQs whose head nouns are not relational. It is shown that set readings cannot be derived under the ‘individual concept’ approach, one of the most influential analyses (...) of CQs on the market. The paper offers a solution to this problem. It shows that once we adopt an independently motivated view of traces—according to which traces are copies with descriptive content —nothing else needs to be postulated to derive set readings within an individual-concept-based analysis. Thus, what seemed to be a challenge for this type of analysis turns out to be an argument in its favor. (shrink)

Nakanishi :115–136, 2012) presents a novel argument for the so-called scope theory of English sentential even, based on examples with antecedent-contained deletion. Nakanishi’s argument is based on the assumption that even cannot associate with a focus which has moved out of its LF scope. I show that this assumption is incorrect, defusing Nakanishi’s argument. I propose that when even associates with a focus which has moved out of its surface scope, it actually associates with focused material in the lower copies (...) of movement. I show that a closer look at ACD examples of Nakanishi’s type in fact yields a new argument against the scope theory. I conclude that English sentential even must always be interpreted in its pronounced position. The patterns of focus association with even presented here constitute a new argument for the copy theory of movement. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to propose a unified approach to the split scope readings of negative indefinites, comparative quantifiers, and numerals. There are two main observations that justify this approach. First, split scope shows the same kinds of restrictions across these different quantifiers. Second, split scope always involves low existential force. In our approach, following Sauerland, natural language determiner quantifiers are quantifiers over choice functions, of type <<,t>,t>. In split readings, the quantifier over choice functions scopes above other (...) operators (such as intensional verbs like must or can). Determiner quantifiers leave a choice-function trace when they move and this trace combines with the noun restriction, which is interpreted low. That split scope always involves low existential force is derived, without stipulation, from Kratzer’s idea that low existential force can be achieved via binding (into the noun restriction). (shrink)

( ) Di erence in Semantic Displacement a. Total Reconstruction: Mary kaupir ikke skó. ¬ Mary kaupir skó b. Variable Binding: Which book Mary had read e set of propositions such that x Mary had read x, x a book. A guard stands before every bank x if x is a bank then a guard stands before x..

talk presented at the Workshop on Coordination, Subordination and Ellipsis, Tubingen, June 2007.